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INGERSOLLISM 



From a Secular Point of View. 



A LECTURE 

DELIVERED IN 

ASSOCIATION HALL, NEW Y<>KK; MUSIC HAIL, BOSTON; IN PHILA- 
DELPHIA, CHICAGO, ST. LOUIS, AND IN OVER SIX HUN- 
DRED OF THE PRINCIPAL LECTURE COURSES OF 
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 



GEORGE R. WENDLING. 



There is more paver for the public safety in the whispered utter- 
ances of a God-fearing priest or preacher than in all your batteries 
and iron-dads. v*-"\&1 (It L0/»flz> \ 



DEC 19 






CHICAGO: 

JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 

1883. 



Ho. 

"[OPWAftM\ 



ho£ 



^* A 

M 



Copyright, 

By JANSEN, McCLURG & CO. 

A.D. 1882. 



KIIIGHT R LEOIIAH.g ■ | 



DEDICATED 

TO 

JOSEPHINE E. WENDLING, 

THE QUEEN OF MY HOME, 
A Perfect Wife and a Perfect Mother. 



— I am not a sad man. Spite of the experience of life — some- 
what bitter — I am a cheerful, and joyous, and happy man. But 
take away my consciousness of God ; let me believe there is no 
Infinite God ; no infinite mind which thought the world into exist- 
ence and thinks it into continuance ; no infinite Conscience which 
everlastingly enacts the eternal laws of the universe; no infinite 
Affection which loves the world ; loves Abel and Cain — loves the 
drunkard's wife and the drunkard ; the Mayors and Aldermen who 
made the drunkard ; which loves the victim of the tyrant, and 
loves the tyrant ; loves the slave and his master ; loves the mur- 
dered and the murderer ; the fugitive and the kidnapper ; that 
there is no God who watches over the nation, but "forsaken 
Israel wanders lone"; that the sad people of Europe, Africa, 
America, have no guardian — then I should be sadder than Egyp- 
tian night. — Theodore Parker. 

7 



— The battle-ground of atheism is not in the field of natural 
science ; meaning by that the study of material phenomena. The 
argument from design to an intelligent contriver does not require 
the knowledge of a Cuvier or Humboldt to make it satisfactory. 
Every man carries about with him in his own organization a 
syllogism which all the logic in the world can never mend. If his 
skepticism will not melt away in such an ocean of evidence, it i6 
because it is insoluble. — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
9 



— There has never been a State of Atheists. If you wander over 
the earth you may find cities without walls, without king, without 
mint, without theatre or gymnasium, but you will never find a 
city without God, without prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice. 
Sooner may a city stand without foundations, than a State without 
belief in the Gods. — Plutarch. 



— I have consulted our philosophers, I have perused their books, 
I have examined their several opinions, I have found them all 
proud, positive and dogmatical, even in their pretended skep- 
ticism ; knowing everything, proving nothing, and ridiculing one 
another. — Rousseau. 

«3 



— I have always been strongly in favor of secular education in the 
sense of education without theology ; but I must confess I have 
been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical meas- 
ures the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, 
was to be kept up in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on 
these matters, without the use of the Bible. — Hudtlev. 



— I would fain ask a minute philosopher what good he proposes to 
mankind by his doctrines? Will they make a man a better citizen 
or father of a family? a more endearing husband, friend, or son? 
Will they enlarge his public or private virtues, or correct any of 
his frailties or vices? What is there either joyful or glorious in 
such opinions? Do they either refresh or enlarge our thoughts? 
Do they contribute to the happiness or raise the dignity of human 
nature? The only good that I have ever heard pretended to is, 
that they banish terrors and set the mind at ease. But whose 
terrors do they banish? Those of impenitent criminals and male- 
factors, and which, to the good of mankind, should be in perpetual 
terror and alarm. — Sir K. Steele: Tatler. 



NOTE 



I PERMIT the publication of this lecture in book 
form for the simple reason that by many people in 
many parts of the country I have often been requested 
to do so. 

My own opinion is that certain qualities — great ear- 
nestness, for example — which entered into the delivery of 
the lecture, but cannot be exhibited on the printed page, 
will largely account for the many commendatory words 
the lecture has received. A good delivery (if you please) 
of very poor matter sometimes blinds the judgment of a 
very acute critic. I am not vain enough to believe for 
a moment that the calm judgment of my critics will find 
in the printed lecture grounds for the unusual praise 
awarded to the lecture on the platform. 

I am sure of but one thing about the matter : I am 
right — Ingersoll is wrong. My methods, my re-state- 
ments of old arguments, my illustrations, my rhetoric, 
may all be lamentably weak, but the ideas which I seek 
to present are invincibly strong. 

I hope the lecture will do good in this form. 



20 



I have often been asked to tell the amount of the 
largest fee I ever received for the delivery of a lecture. 
I think the very largest reward any lecturer ever received 
was the one I got not long since. Some one sent me, 
one day after I had lectured in Pittsburgh, a copy of the 
•'Daily Commercial Gazette," of that city. The follow- 
ing paragraph in the paper was marked : 

Obituary. — William Lewis, a young man of great promise, 
died after a brief illness at his home in the Thirty-fifth ward, 
Sabbath night, from an attack of pneumonia, which only lasted 
a few days. His death is profoundly lamented by a large host 
of young friends. His character was irreproachable. A singular 
incident is noted in connection with the sad affair. The deceased, 
though a young man of fine moral character, had honest doubts 
as to the reality of the Christian faith, but he was a sincere and 
candid seeker after light. He had read much on the subject, and 
gave a hearing to both, sides. On the Monday evening when 
Hon. Geo. R. Wendling lectured, he, with some friends, came 
over to hear that gentleman, and after the lecture said he had 
become convinced of the truth of Christianity, and henceforth he 
would pin his faith to that belief. His convictions on the subject 
were clear, and during the few remaining days of his life he was 
earnest, though modest, in expressing his new faith, and in 
accepting it. 

Now I am neither a preacher nor the son of a 
preacher. I do not even know whether I am orthodox 
or not. I have never cared to know. I doubt if there 
be much practical piety about me. But I have learned 
that that paragraph is true ; and, being true, I call it the 
greatest fee I ever received. 



NOTE. 21 



If the gentlemen who compose the famous publishing 

house which sets its imprint hereon can apprise me 

some day of another such incident, I shall regard the 

publication of the lecture in book form under their 

auspices as "a success," despite its manifold faults and 

blemishes. 

G. R. W. 
Bloomington, III. 



INGERSOLLISM: 



A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 



THE Decalogue — the solitary autograph 
of the Eternal — is not a mistake. 

On the plains of Sinai have perished icon- 
oclasts without number, in the ineffectual at- 
tempt to supplant that Decalogue with the 
ever shifting dictates of Reason. 

When Human Reason — a bright and glo- 
rious goddess — shall add to that Decalogue 
one line, or take one line from it, I will yield 
to her the exclusive homage of my heart and 
brain. 

He of Nazareth, with His divine wisdom, 
might say it, but Human Reason has tried in 



24 INGERSOLLISM: 



vain for five thousand years to say — A new 
commandment I give unto you. 

Yet if Robert Ingersoll be right, every man 
makes his own God, and aside from that we 
cannot know that there is a God ; Christ was 
at the best an enthusiast ; the Bible is a 
curse ; religion a conscious or unconscious 
sham ; a future reckoning a. chimera ; and im- 
mortality perhaps a fancy. 

This is Ingersollism in its nude state, in its 
primordial nakedness — stripped of its gor- 
geous and glowing raiment, its rhetorical 
drapery. It is a very ancient thing, but the 
magnificent and unique genius of its modern 
sponsor entitles it to a modern and unique 
name. 

Before we go further allow me another pre- 
liminary word. I have learned something in 
the West of the private life of the gentleman 
whose views I condemn, whose name fur- 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 25 

nishes forth the title of this lecture. I not 
only honor his abilities, but I also respect his 
personal character. Thus at the beginning, 
with these words of sincere and just compli- 
ment, let us have done at once and forever 
with all personalities. If any one has come 
to listen to personal detraction of Robert 
Ingersoll, he has come to be disappointed. If 
any one comes to be amused, he too has come 
to be disappointed, for I have come to speak 
seriously upon very grave subjects. 

Let me detain you at the threshold one 
moment longer. You and I will stand toward 
each other upon a footing I much prefer, if 
you will at once dismiss the impressions crea- 
ted by the far too friendly and partial words 
which have announced this lecture. Put aside 
all thought of the graces, arts, and effects of 
oratory. I pretend to nothing but a plain 
and earnest discussion of the great questions 



26 INGERSOLLISM: 



which lie before us now, nor shall I in that 
discussion sacrifice strength for novelty, by 
ignoring arguments older than myself — ar- 
guments which have stood the tests of time. 
I am here, not to challenge your criticism, 
but to invoke your serious attention. 

We go now to our theme. 

I have defined, or rather I have summa- 
rized, Ingersollism, fairly I think, without an 
exaggerating tint or a shadow of misrepre- 
sentation. In my judgment, these doctrines 
called Ingersollism seriously affect our social 
and political structures as well as our relig- 
ious institutions. I conceive that the inevit- 
able consequences, business and political, of 
such teachings are of the gravest importance 
to every citizen. I speak, therefore, as a citi- 
zen, as a business man, as a lawyer, and, if 
you please, as a politician — discarding the 
narrow meaning of that word ; and as such, 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 2J 

would speak to men of every faith and call- 
ing. I would speak as a " Man of the 
World," as the churches say, and I would 
address myself to men of the world, upon the 
business, social, and political phases of the 
teachings Ingersoll forces Upon our attention. 
I champion no creed nor sect. I place hu- 
manity above all the creeds of the creed-build- 
ers, and my country above all political and 
religious partizanship. 

. Looking at the subject now from the point 
of view we have taken, very practical thoughts 
at once suggest themselves. There is an im- 
portant question of political economy involved 
in this whole religious controversy. I turn 
from the pages of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and 
Professor Bowen, and say that if the element- 
ary teachings of political economy be true, 
and Ingersoll and his followers be right, every 
church spire in the land is a monument of 



2 8 INGERSOLLISM: 



financial stupidity, every pulpit a bad invest- 
ment. We must go further still. We must 
transform our places of worship into ware- 
houses and workshops, stop every religious 
press, put stocks of merchandise or steam en- 
gines and spindles into all church buildings, 
convert our priests into pedagogues, our theo- 
logical students into students of medicine, and 
our great preachers into politicians. Con- 
sider the effect upon " the balance of trade," 
our " table of exports," if these millions of 
men and money be driven into channels of 
productive industry. Take the footings of 
our last census.* Sixty-three thousand church 
edifices and twenty-one million five hundred 
thousand church sittings in the United States! 
Three hundred and fifty-four millions of dol- 
lars invested in property devoted to the pur- 
poses of religion! Five times as many men 

*The Census of 1870. 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 29 

consecrating their lives to the cause of religion 
as may be found in our standing army! Con- 
sider the details, infinite in number, variety, 
and expense, from an international or quad- 
rennial or ecumenical council, conference, or 
synod, down to a mid-week prayer-meeting. 
In your calculations, include the fact that 
almost the entire number of our fifty millions 
suspend all remunerative employment once a 
week and sacrifice fifty-two days every year ! 
Why, free trade, the remonetization of silver, 
the resumption of specie payments, the con- 
tinuance of the national banking system, and 
our schemes for river and harbor improve- 
ments, are all mere bagatelles when compared 
with the practical question these facts in- 
volve ! 

I put this phase of Ingersollism before you 
as bankers, merchants, tradesmen, professional 
men, and laborers of all kinds, because the 



INGERSOLLISM: 



facts involved therein bear directly and most 
powerfully upon your financial interests, and 
because, having met more than one dishonest 
man calling himself religious, many of us lend 
willing ears to Ingersoll's destructive falla- 
cies. Before I have done I shall more than 
once recur to this financial and practical phase 
of Ingersollism ; but let us now rise for a 
while above the dollar view, and inquire if in 
the domain of history, science, or reason, he 
finds warrant for his teachings. Of this in- 
quiry I fear you may perhaps become impa- 
tient ; it may seem to you collateral, but in 
truth we shall find it very pertinent and vital. 
As lawyers, tradesmen, bankers, railroad 
managers, and men of manual labor, all of 
you have, I know full well, little time for 
metaphysics and philosophy. Therefore, I 
do not propose to undertake at this time a 
philosophical inquiry into the existence of 



FROM A SECL'LAR POIXT OF VIEW. 31 

God. I shall not inquire into the truth of 
the Bible as a whole. I shall not reason in 
theological formulae about the character of 
Jesus Christ. I bring you no system of the- 
ology. To different hands from mine must 
those inquiries be assigned, and from another 
standpoint than mine must those inquiries, 
for the graver purposes of life, be approached. 
Bear in mind then, if you please, that I do 
not propose to myself the lofty task of fur- 
nishing argument which shall solve the mighty 
questions suggested by the words God and 
Christ. Nevertheless, I conceive it to be im- 
possible to rationally discuss the bearings of 
Ingersoll's teachings upon our secular inter- 
ests without first inquiring into Ingersoll's 
doctrines concerning : 

I. God. 

II. Christ. 

III. The Bible. 



32 



INGERSOLLISM: 



That inquiry I propose to prosecute only 
so far as shall enable me to assert, that as 
between the solutions offered by Ingersoll 
and his followers upon the one hand, and the 
Church upon the other, men of affairs and 
men who love their homes and their country 
cannot hesitate. 

The opening sentence of Ingersoll's lecture 
on "The Gods" — a lecture containing every 
semblance of argument that he has ever urged 
against religion — contains the pregnant soph- 
ism of all his reasoning. He begins with the 
abrupt and startling statement, " Each nation 
has created a God." If that be true, then 
indeed has this gentleman found ground for 
sweeping arguments and fierce philippic. If 
history shows that human nature sets up for 
itself its own peculiar God, according to time 
and circumstance, why, then the frightful 
thought comes unbidden to the brain that we 



EAO.V A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 7>3 

may have done the same ! That thought I nger- 
soll seizes upon and makes the central thought 
of his every endeavor. In every conceivable 
way; by hint and by jest; by innuendo and by 
positive allegation; by direction and indirec- 
tion; everywhere and at all times does he 
seek to plant the belief that God is a creation 
of the imagination. 

• And let me tell you, this one thought has 
unsettled more of you than the census-taker 
will ever discover. The pulpit is preaching 
against what it calls Modern Infidelity; but 
I say — and many of you will not believe 
me until you reflect upon it — I say that the 
need of the day is the destruction of Ancient 
Atheism. Countless are the reasons why 
men will not avow the full measure of their 
doubts concerning the existence of an omnip- 
otent and personal God ; nevertheless, those 
doubts exist, and are greater foes to the 



34 



INGERSOLLISM: 



progress of religion than any of the causes 
more frequently assailed by the pulpit. I 
would not presume to tell clergymen their 
duty ; yet mingling more than they with men 
of the world, I bring to them, from workshop 
and from farm, from the bar, and from the 
public places of every Venice where mer- 
chants most do congregate, the message that 
what most we need is the conviction that 
there is a personal God. Strive to supply 
that conviction, and seek to hedge it about 
with unanswerable argument, and the Church 
wins an invincible lodgment in the hearts of 
all sincere men. Upon this point, where too 
much is assumed every day by the pulpit 
as granted, has Ingersoll, with consummate 
ingenuity, struck, and said, " Each nation has 
created a God." 

Let us look at that statement as we would 
at a proposition in law, politics, or trade. 



Let us understand the words we use; for, as 
thought expresses itself in words, a right 
word is always as necessary as a right 
thought. We know from the tricks of trade, 
of legislation, and of politicians, that words 
may be mountains or pitfalls. 

"What do you read, my lord?" 

inquired Polonius; and believe me, Hamlet 
was more a profound philosopher than simu- 
lated fool when he answered, 

"Words, words, words." 

Let us go to an arbiter accepted in all our 
courts. We ask of Webster the meaning of 
this wonderful word " God," and he tells us 
that the word stands first for an object of 
worship. This, however, he follows by defin- 
ing the word to mean " the Supreme Being, 
the eternal and infinite Spirit, the Creator 
and Sovereign of the universe." Now turn 
to the word " Idol," and we find the primary 



36 INGERSOLLISM: 



meaning of that word to be "an image or 
representation of anything," and this he fol- 
lows by further defining the word to mean 
"an image of a divinity." Now, with these 
definitions in mind, let us look again at the 
bold statement, " Each nation has created a 
God," and the argument must run thus : 
Each nation has created an object of worship. 
That we admit. What follows ? That each 
nation has created an Eternal and Infinite 
Spirit, a Creator and Sovereign of the uni- 
verse ? Substitute the word "idol" or 
" images representing a god," and the argu- 
ment is historically true. Substitute the 
words " Eternal and Infinite Spirit," and the 
argument is historically false The fallacy 
lies — the very simple fallacy, when once 
it is exposed — in confounding the idea of 
worshipping an Eternal and Infinite Spirit 
of which no graven image can be made, with 



the idea of worshipping imaginary or created 
beings capable of being symbolized by im- 
ages. It is the fallacy of confounding idol- 
atry or image-worship with the worship of 
the Eternal and Infinite Spirit. English- 
speaking peoples have named the Eternal 
and Infinite Spirit — God. But the poverty 
of our language has compelled us to call the 
objects of heathen worship — gods. It is 
remarkable — it is anomalous — but it is true, 
that the word when used in the singular has 
a meaning entirely dissociated from the 
meaning which attaches to the plural. Our 
conception of God, as defined by Webster, 
excludes the conception of gods, and Inger- 
soll, in speaking of gods, attempts to con- 
found the two conceptions, and therein lies 
his fallacy. Substitute, I repeat, the word 
idols, or images representing a god, and his 
argument is historically true ; substitute the 



38 INGERSOLLISM: 



words Eternal and Infinite Spirit, and his 
argument is historically false. Many nations 
have created gods, and each nation different 
gods ; but among all nations may be found 
traces of the idea of the supreme God. 

I affirm — and in making this affirmation 
I am not unmindful of the apparent excep- 
tion noted by Sir John Lubbock — I affirm 
that among every people, in every quarter 
of the habitable globe, there exists this day, 
and has existed from the furthest reach 
of history, the idea of one eternal and all- 
powerful God. Among the Greeks the idea 
was embodied in their Zeus, and in the 
remotest period of Greek antiquity there 
lingered a faith in one supreme God. Con- 
fucius, five hundred years before the Chris- 
tian era, addressed prayers to the mysterious 
and unknown power, and the oldest of Chi- 
nese books teach that there is one supreme 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 39 

God. The Rig-Veda of ancient India speaks 
of One who is God above gods. The Zend- 
Avesta of Zoroaster, written, as all anti- 
quaries agree, not less than one thousand 
years before the new era, recognizes one 
Original and Infinite Being. The mythology 
of ancient Egypt, with all its worship of 
animals and idols, has for its central fact that 
Osiris was the supreme God. In the religion 
of the Teutonic and Scandinavian races may 
be found their Odin, described in their Eddas 
and Sagas as the very God of gods. In the 
Pentateuch we learn that many centuries 
before the new era, the Jews believed in and 
worshipped Jehovah as the one ever-living 
and all-powerful God. The North American 
Indian has his one Great Spirit. Go where 
you will, to Europe, Asia, America, Africa, 
and to the islands of the sea, and all through 
the ages there runs the idea of one eternal 



40 INGERSOLLISM: 



and all-powerful God. While each and all 
of these nations have had many idols, many 
images of worship, many of Ingersoll's gods, 
yet among them all, and over and above them 
all, may be found traces of the idea of a 
supreme God. This fact, this very important 
historical fact, with which we necessarily 
begin our discussion, cannot be doubted — 
cannot be denied. It is as true as history 
itself, and it is as prominent as any other 
one fact in history. 

Quitting the domain of history, Ingersoll 
goes to metaphysics, and asserts that man 
has no ideas, and can have none, except those 
suggested by his surroundings. He tells us 
that man cannot conceive of anything utterly 
unlike what he has seen or felt. In a word, 
he tells us that ideas and conceptions are 
the reflections of things. 

I shall not suggest here any of the difficul- 



FROM A SECi'LAR POINT OF VIEW. 4 1 

ties which the intuitional school of metaphy- 
sicians oppose to the school that derive all 
ideas from sensation- — the school from which 
Ingersoll takes his statement. On the con- 
trary, I grant the statement to be true. But 
now, if the broad proposition be true that 
man has no ideas except those suggested by 
his surroundings, whence comes the idea, that 
has run like a golden gleam through the ages, 
of one Eternal and Omnipotent God ? 

Whence comes it ? 

By Ingersoll's own argument, by his own 
philosophy, by his own metaphysics, there 
must be such a God, else the idea would not 
exist ! 

And do you know that you cannot imagine 
a thing to be which does not exist ? Make 
the experiment. Behold ! — gorgons, naiads, 
and centaurs — angels of light and imps of 
darkness — Asmodeus with dyed garments — 



42 



INGERSOLLISM: 



and Queen Mab — and the Culprit Fay — and 
Caliban — and the god Ahura Mazda, the Per- 
sian fount of primeval light — and fancies 
without number, as wild and spectral and 
grand as those of dreamland in a fevered 
sleep, — come and go and come again. But 
stop! You are simply imagining new combi- 
nations of old material! You have gone into 
that marvellous work-shop, your brain, and 
taken thence ideas which surroundings in the 
past have suggested, experience accumulated, 
and memory preserved, made novel combina- 
tions, and you, like Ingersoll, stand ready to 
proclaim yourself a Creator, when in fact 
you are only a carpenter and joiner ! For, re- 
solve now every one of your weirdest imagin- 
ings into its component parts, and Brahma 
the Golden and Vishnu the Sombre lie at 
your feet classified into legs and arms and 
heads and crescents, and necklaces of skulls. 



FROM A SECi'LAR POINT OF VIEW. 43 

Under this law every one of the high gods of 
heathendom is resolved into its constituent 
parts ; the Devil of mediaeval superstition 
falls back into his original elements of hoofs 
and horns, and his reputed home, the mediae- 
val hell, fades away in vanishing clouds of 
sulphurous smoke, or disappears forever in 
the brilliant but evanescent and unreal flames 
of a poet's Inferno. 

But the conception, the thought, the idea 
of one ever-living and all-powerful God, an 
eternal and infinite Spirit, is not touched by 
this law. That conception has no constituent 
elements. It is a single concept. It is abso- 
lute. It is a perfect type of unity. It stands 
alone. It lies beyond the line of imagination. 
It is of itself a revelation. Being an idea, 
then, which has existed from the beeinnine in 
the minds of men, it must, by Ingersoll's 
logic, be the reflection of a fact. 



44 INGERSOLLISM: 



Again, he tells us that a belief in God 
springs from fear and solicitude concerning 
future events and a desire to placate the Un- 
known. The stupendous error in this state- 
ment is the indisputable fact that man, civil- 
ized and uncivilized, learned and unlearned, 
vicious and innocent — yonder in the crowded 
streets of the city, and there in the solitude 
of the forest — now and in all past ages — 
turns in his darkest hours with trust and con- 
fidence to that God, and unconsciously, intui- 
tively, instinctively acknowledges His good- 
ness, by always, in the moment of calamity, 
invoking His aid. No! no! I tell you, in the 
name of every truthful line the muse of his- 
tory has yet inspired, that Atheism is the 
primeval coward — your genuine coward — 
conceived in cowardice — brought forth in 
cowardice — reared in cowardice — and in the 
unclean garb of Nihilism, Socialism and Com- 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 45 

munism, swaggers through Europe and Amer- 
ica to-day, a cowardly braggart! 

Atheism, vaporing like Bessus, Pistol, or 
Bobadil, and as belligerent as Sir Lucius 
O' Trigger, grapples now and then, and over- 
comes, some sickly child begotten of an un- 
healthy orthodoxy, and forthwith proclaims 
itself a giant. At other times it falls, here 
and there, upon some discarded and defence- 
less tenet, left behind in the march of religious 
growth and progress, and around it dances 
the war-dance of a cowardly savage, and with 
an air of bravado proclaims itself the puissant 
and only foe of bigotry. Here, in the pres- 
ence of scholars who have won distinction on 
a hundred intellectual battle-fields, I appeal to 
the history of intellectual development in 
every age and in every land, and make the 
explicit and direct charge that Atheism is the 
coward of the centuries, white-headed and 



46 INGERSOLLISM: 



craven-hearted, skulking through the by-ways 
of sophistry, and not daring to come iftto the 
presence of even a merciful God. 

Again, Ingersoll tells us that ignorance of 
the causes of events and the phenomena of 
nature impelled man to assign supernatural 
causes. Hath not a little learning made 
Atheism mad ? 

Because an eclipse is now known to be no 
miracle ; because the thunder is now known 
to be not God's voice, and the errant light- 
ning not His thunderbolt; because the sun in 
truth does not rise, and the moon's phases 
are not the effects of an unknown power ; 
because pestilence is the direful penalty of 
violating some law of nature and comes not 
as the blighting curse of some black angel 
sent to earth on a mission of woe; because 
in many instances science has explained phe- 
nomena which ignorance attributed to super- 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 47 



natural causes, Atheism, forsooth, dispenses 
with God — waves aside the Almighty- — bows 
out the Eternal One. 

Come, then, and tell us the secret of the 
great law of gravitation ; explain to us the 
beating .of the heart; tell us what the princi- 
ple of life is in animal or plant ; explain the 
origin of protoplasm or monad ; whom or 
what do those heavenly bodies obey which 
complete their orbits "only after the lapse of 
ages, and which reappear with unfailing pre- 
cision at the point from which they started, 
as if to present themselves to Him who sent 
them on their way;" how comes it that races 
of men and animals are conserved by a due 
proportion of male and female births; whence 
comes and what is force, and what is thought, 
and what is love, and what is conscience, and 
where and what is the power that holds and 
guides throughout countless aeons, sun, earth, 



48 INGERSOLLISM: 

and moon in their majestic courses ; and why 
is it that one drop of water is still as wonder- 
ful as all the seas, one leaf as all the forests, 
and one grain of sand as all the stars ? 

Here, then, is the Atheistic dilemma. As 
knowledge increases, the vista of fhe un- 
known enlarges, and thereby the very cause 
assigned for an increase of scientific Atheism 
becomes a more potent reason for a belief 
in God. 

But once again, he tells us that nature 
is too ill-contrived an affair at best, suscep- 
tible of too many improvements for it ever 
to have come from the omnipotent hand 
of an all-wise and all-merciful God. Our 
brilliant Atheist would have made the earth 
free from disease and pain — no sorrow, no 
suffering, no sickness, no enfeebled age, no 
storm, nor famine, nor pestilence, nor death. 
I ask the question here : — Has Atheism any 



FAOM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 



49 



infallible scheme of its own whereby these 
evils, one or all, may be removed ? And 
from the gloomy retreat of Fatalism there 
comes the sullen answer: Nay — we have 
none. I ask another question : With all the 
woe and suffering of earth, is there not more 
of happiness than sorrow ? And again the 
reluctant answes comes : Crime and wretch- 
edness dwell only here and there. Once 
more I ask : Is it not true that our blessings 
are in a measure conditioned by our evils — 
that without vice there could be no stern and 
durable virtue in morals, and without a con- 
flict with nature none of our glorious prog- 
ress in science ? And even the philosophy of 
Atheism must answer : All this is true. 
Were it otherwise, nature itself would be 

" Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, 
Dead perfection, no more." 
4 



5o 



INGERSOLLISM: 



The "moving why" of evil we may not 
solve, but its existence strengthens not one 
whit the arm of Atheism. 

It may seem that cruelty goes unpunished, 
virtue unrewarded, and injured innocence un- 
requited ; but who can tell ? 

What is the plan, of which we are parts, 
and what shall be its final outcome ? We 
know a little of this planet and of our times, 
and have books we call histories ; but what 
of the future and its reckoning ? And 
this world we call ours — it is but a star of 
minor magnitude in the great firmament of 
stars. Who, even the most casual and indif- 
ferent reader, thinking of that future, can 
look into yonder firmament and see the in- 
finite hosts of worlds roll by, and not catch 
a glimpse of the deep, deep meaning in the 
words of that Wonderful One who claimed 
kinship with God, and said, at eventide, and 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 51 

perhaps pointing to the stars: — "In my 
Father's house are many mansions " ? 

Enough now of these cavillings. Let us 
go on to matter of more moment to us all. 

In dealing with Ingersoll's eloquent de- 
nials, with his brilliant banterings, with his 
coruscating captiousness, we cannot but feel 
that we are only skirting the borders of the 
matter in hand, that we are parties to a 
guerilla war on the frontier. Let us turn, 
therefore, and go further, not forgetting that 
we are now at length brought face to face 
with a subject of awful significance. 

It matters very little to us as business men, 
I am sure, whether this or that creed, or this 
or that article of faith, has few or many doc- 
trinal errors in it ; but our social, our busi- 
ness, and our political life contain so many 
hidden springs of action resting upon the 
idea that there is one eternal and all-power- 



52 



INGERSOLLISM: 



ful God, that we would not — ought not — can 
not — do not — rest until we feel that our feet 
are upon a rock. It is not enough, then, that 
we answer the cavils and sneers of Atheism. 
Let us move, therefore, into a position where 
we may invite attack — a position which no 
form of infidelity has ever yet successfully 
assailed. 

Two hundred years ago, Ralph Cudworth, 
in his grand work — "The True Intellectual 
System of the Universe" — revived the an- 
cient query : Were eyes made for the sake of 
seeing, and were ears made for the sake of 
hearing ? But a day or two ago, as it were, 
Joseph Cook, with all the power of a master 
mind and tongue, brought scientific Atheism 
face to face with that same question, and 
defied a denial of its proof of God. Let me 
convey to you, for purposes of my own, this 
argument of Cudworth's and Cook's, divested 



FROM A SECULAR POI.VT OF VIE IV 



53 



of its metaphysical and technical terms ; and 
here let me ask for a single moment only 
your close attention. 

The idea or thought of sight preceded the 
making of an eye. The idea or thought of 
hearing preceded the making of an ear. 

"How do you know that?" asks an audi- 
tor. In the same way that I know that ques- 
tion existed in your mind before you gave it 
language. Your language is but the outer 
coating of your doubt. The doubt rested in 
your mind until your language came as a 
vehicle to carry the doubt to me. So the 
eye and the ear are but articulate expressions 
of the two thoughts, sight and hearing. 

Now Paley came, many years ago, and 
said, as you have all often heard, " There can 
be no design without a designer." And Soc- 
rates said it, and Plato said it, two thousand 
three hundred years ago, and the best intel- 



54 INGERSOLLISM: 



lects of the human race have said it in every 
age. And it is true, true enough; but I am 
not taking your time with a needless repeti- 
tion of the celebrated "design argument." 
There is something more than mere design 
in eye and ear, in sight and hearing — much 

more. Sicrht and hearing are in and of them- 
es o 

selves thoughts ; thoughts which had an ex- 
istence in the mind of something or .some one 
before ever ear and eye were made. Not 
only can there be no design without a de- 
signer, but there can be no thought without 
a thinker. 

There is design in the eye, it is true, but 
there is thought in sight. There is design 
in the ear, it is true, but there is thought in 
hearing. There is thought in nature ; there 
is thought in this boundless universe of ours ; 
there is thought? in history, as epoch slowly 
succeeds epoch ; and all that thought is other 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 



55 



than our thought ; and thought other than 
our own simply means a thinker other than 
ourselves, for there can be no thought with- 
out a thinker. 

There is the logic of old, breaking anew 
like a sun-burst upon this age of facts ! It is 
invincible. Its very simplicity makes it in- 
comparably grand. Before it, the laws of 
evolution and development, of conservation 
and correlation of forces, must take their 
places as secondary causes. Let the human 
eye be the consummation of countless ages 
of growth and development, if you will ; yet 
above that growth and development must 
have stood a Thinker with the preconceived 
idea or thought of sight. There is the logic 
of the psalmist, the philosopher of old, and 
the devout scientist of to-day. History and 
reason must bow before it. I repeat, it is 
invincible. Pleasurable as the task would be, 



56 INGERSOLLISM: 



I need not dwell upon it. Elaboration can- 
not strengthen it. It is but one of a million 
of illustrations. Its full force will come upon 
you in countless ways. Fix in your minds 
and hold firmly, now and hereafter, the un- 
deniable proposition that there can be no 
thought other than our own unless there be 
somewhere in the universe a thinker other 
than ourselves, and surely and steadily you 
move by the light of reason into the sublime 
presence of the great Thinker of the universe 
— the wonderful, the omnipotent, the ineffa- 
ble One whom the Christian world calls 
God. 

As rational men, we will go now out into 
the world, each man to his own particular sta- 
tion, carrying with him the consciousness of 
one Eternal and Infinite Beingf. 

Now, what are the moral attributes of that 



FROM A SECCLAR POIXT OF VIEW. 57 

Being ? We cannot pass from this branch of 
our discussion just yet, for this question de- 
mands an answer here, because man has a 
moral nature ; because there is something in 
every man which says : "I ought," and " I 
ought not." Weave around this fact all the 
casuistry you will, and tell me, if you choose, 
with Hume, and Volney, and Voltaire, that 
"I ought" in Constantinople simply means 
"I ought not" in London; still the fact re- 
mains that God made man with this omni- 
present " I ought " implanted in his nature. 

And this moral, like the intellectual part of 
man, must have a teacher. Man must have 
an ideal. That moral ideal will be found 
when he finds the attributes of his God and 
learns how he may grow toward them. 

I am preaching no abstruse philosophy. I 
simply proclaim human nature as God made 
it. In art, in literature, in religion, in poli- 



58 WGERSOLLTSM: 



tics, in business and in every-day life, men 
grow toward their ideals. Every man, young 
or old, has, consciously or unconsciously, his 
ideal. A thousand things betoken it in child- 
hood. Study your little ones for a passing 
hour as they play about your hearth-stone, 
and you will see that a thousand things be- 
token, in children even, their ideals of man- 
hood and womanhood. The school-room, 
then, of the mental man, must have, some- 
where and somehow, in society, a counterpart 
for the moral man. A teacher, I say, and an 
ideal, all must have. Why, eighteen hundred 
years ago, Plutarch said that whenever we 
begin an enterprise, or take possession of a 
charge, or experience a calamity, we place 
before our eyes the greatest men of our own 
or of by-gone ages, and ask ourselves how 
Plato, Epaminondas, or Lycurgus, would have 
acted. And he adds that, looking into these 



FROM A SEC TLA A POINT OF VIEW. 



59 



personages as into a faithful mirror, we may 
remedy our defects in word or deed ; and 
whenever any perplexity arises or any passion 
disturbs the mind, the student of philosophy 
pictures to himself some of those who have 
been justly celebrated for their virtues, and 
the recollection sustains his tottering steps 
and prevents his fall. 

Another thought just here : Leek) - , in his 
" History of Morals," regards it, and justly, I 
think, as an axiomatic fact, that any moral 
system for the government of society must 
be capable of influencing natures which can 
never rise to a heroic level. So it comes that 
if Plutarch's philosopher needs an ideal, much 
more must we, as plain men of business, as 
men of every-day life, possess an ideal too. 
Who, then, shall be our moral ideal, and 
where shall we find our moral teacher ? A 
plain practical question that I put to you in 



6o ItfGERSOLLISM: 



the interests of your homes and your chil- 
dren, in the interest of society, in the interest 
of our country, and not in the interest of any 
sect under the broad dome of heaven ; and 
I answer that question by saying that The 
Book, and The Book alone, can furnish that 
teacher, and The Book alone can supply that 
ideal ; and by The Book I mean the aggregate 
of religious teachings and influences embodied 
in and derived from the Bible. 

The one unifying element which permeates 
all Christian sects and denominations is a 
common faith in the moral and religious suffi- 
ciency of the Bible ; and again do I say that 
the Bible furnishes, and it alone, the Teacher 
and the Ideal we seek. 

Ingersoll and his followers say, " No ! " 
Modern infidelity steps to the front, in this 
the evening of the nineteenth century, and 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 6 I 

cries, "No! — go to the Trinity of Reason, 
Observation, and Experience." 

Let us try this issue in Ingersoll's own 
chosen forum — the court of Experience. The 
mighty question which greets us at the very 
threshold, as plain practical men — for we of 
this Western world are plain practical men — 
the question, I say, which greets us at the 
very threshold is : Whose experience, obser- 
vation and reason shall guide us, who stand 
in need of a teacher ? Plato's, the very king 
of philosophers ? Why, he taught that wives 
should be held in common, in order that their 
children might be the more exclusively at- 
tached to their country. He advocated sui- 
cide in the presence of poverty or other great 
calamity ; and in this, Seneca, Pliny, and other 
schools of philosophy, agree. Take the an- 
cient teachers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and 
all — than whom, I take it, not even Robert 



62 INGERSOLLISM: 



Ingersoll himself, nor any of his disciples, is 
a greater philosopher — and concede all that 
may be claimed for their philosophy and 
learninor and grant that in the five hundred 
years prior to the advent of the new era, 
mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, mechan- 
ics, and other sciences, achieved grand dis- 
tinction, yet the indisputable fact remains 
that in point of public and private morals 
their times were as dark as the darkest of all 
the ages. It is historically true, and every 
classical scholar knows that even their god- 
desses were odiously impure, and that the 
most debasing of idolatrous rites and ceremo- 
nies prevailed. 

I am speaking history now. Look to every 
point of the compass during the five hundred 
years prior to the advent of the New Era, 
among nations barbarous or polished, and a 
black impenetrable mass of moral disorder 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 63 

and ruin rises before our eyes. I repeat, I 
am speaking history. Under the guidance of 
philosophy, led by reason, observation, and 
experience, revenge and rapine, fraud, theft, 
suicide and cruelty, were patronized and coun- 
tenanced by the masses, taught by philoso- 
phers, and reprobated by none. Short-lived 
epochs free from those vices may be found, 
but they stand as prominent exceptions to an 
almost universal rule. Moral misery, like a 
black portentous cloud, overshadowed the 
world with gloom. Why? In the presence 
of all this learning and philosophy, why this 
condition of public morals ? 

These five hundred years are the golden 
age, it seems to me, of the human mind, in 
purely intellectual achievements. Our cen- 
tury, it is true, outstrips all the centuries in 
displays of inventive genius, in feats of utili- 
ty. But ours is a mechanical age; that, an 



64 INGERSOLLISM: 



age of lofty speculation, of intellect in its 
higher walks, of philosophy, art, and poetry. 
That was the age that saw Socrates in the 
streets of Athens, heard Plato in his garden 
near the Academy, and beheld in the Acropo- 
lis the Olympian Jupiter fresh from the im- 
mortal chisel of the master Phidias. It was 
the age that gave us Euclid and his pupil 
Archimedes — that gave us Aristotle — that 
gave us Demosthenes. It was the age that 
read history fresh from the unrivalled pen of 
Thucydides, and applauded the wonderful 
dramas of ^Eschylus. It was an age, indeed, 
that saw in sculptured marble rarer forms of 
grace and beauty and majestic power than 
the world ever saw before or since ; that 
heard strains of eloquence and poetry as 
thrilling as ever fell on mortal ear ; that pon- 
dered the grave problems of life with as 
profound insight as unaided intellect has ever 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 65 

shown ; and in every department of specula- 
tive philosophy reached the very mountain 
heights of human endeavor. 

Again do I ask, why, in such an age as 
that, do we find such a condition of public 
morals ? 

The answer is simple, direct, and unmis- 
takably true : — Because there was no univer- 
sally recognized standard of moral truth ; 
because there was no generally accepted code 
of right; and because there was no order of 
men to instruct the masses in morals. An- 
cient Ingersollism held undisputed sway, and 
universal night brooded over land and sea. 

Slowly, beautifully, like the coming of the 
dawn, like the soft approach of the sunrise, 
comes from Judea a new philosophy. Here 
let us pause a moment. 

We have gone out into our business 
world — gone with man to his counting-room, 



66 INGERSOLLISM: 



and workshop, and farm — left him to his 
struggle with life and nature, conscious only 
of God, and looking around and above for 
an ideal, and troubled by the perplexing 
altercations of the omnipresent "I ought" 
and " I ought not." Let us still leave him 
there, and go back through the ages, and, 
retracing our steps, discover if we can the 
secret of our modern civilization, and learn 
if we may where man shall find the Ideal 
One. 

There is a book in two volumes called the 
Bible. It claims to be authentic. Admit 
that claim for the present — for a few mo- 
ments only. The older volume closes with 
a prophecy ; the new opens with a fulfilment 
and culminates with a revelation. The older 
volume fills one with the feeling that a mar- 
vellous but undisclosed element underlies the 
movement of the book. Generations come 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 6 J 

and go, but seem to tend in one dire-ction. 
There seems to be a life below the surface, 
and in the words of an unknown writer : 
" Through the prophetic veil there glows the 
image of a man, stranger to every one, yet 
friendly to all," And a marvellous image it 
is! — so indistinct, and yet so positive; gen- 
tle, yet carrying awful power ; very near, yet 
distant as the unseen God ; and a strange 
spell binds the reader, until, having closed 
the prophecies, he opens the next volume, 
and in the opening chapter finds the Past 
assembled — forty-two generations, convened 
as witnesses to attest a birth — and comes to 
the Star, the Virgin, and the Child ! 

Shall we stop now to question the incom- 
prehensible ? Remember, we are moving in 
the presence of the Infinite, and to deny the 
possibility of an Incarnation is to deny the 
omnipotence of the Omnipotent ! 



68 INGERSOLLISM: 



The story moves rapidly on. The angelic 
Annunciation, the Manger, the homage of 
the Wise Men — all pass before us like a 
panorama. Then come the sword of Herod, 
the flight, the retirement for thirty years, 
interrupted only by a reappearance at the 
age of twelve ; then come the Baptism, the 
Temptation, the Sermon on the Mount ; 
then come miracles and parables and say- 
ings — a new philosophy — the calling of fol- 
lowers — a tumult among people and rulers 

— the betrayal — the trial — the crucifixion 

— the resurrection — the ascension. Three 
years more have passed ; the Pentecost and 
the Church soon follow, and — be that story 
true or false — the mightiest revolution 
known among men is begun, for the Being 
whose strange career we have gazed upon 
shall become the Christ of civilized humanity! 

Now, what has this singular narration to 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 69 

do with you and your interests as business 
men ? Let us pursue our argument yet a 
while, and we shall see. 

I do not stop now to argue that the prin- 
cipal of these events as historical realities 
actually occurred. The German and the 
French rationalistic schools of infidelity made 
all-important concessions here fifteen years 
ago, and an intelligent minister or priest shall 
convince you of it in a single sermon. I do 
not claim that any one or more of these 
events sustain any doctrine peculiar to some 
Christian sect. Enough and more than 
enough of such discourses are always at your 
hands. I shall not enter upon an argument 
to prove that these events fulfil a prophecy. 
Every Bible student is armed here from top 
to toe, and every congregation can set for- 
ward scores of such who shall give you in an 
hour overwhelming proofs. 



JO INGERSOLLISM: 



All this, however, is aside from, or at best 
incidental to, my purpose. But one fact we 
cannot overlook — a tremendous fact: this 
Christ — no matter now what He may be, no 
matter now who He may be, no matter now 
whether this book we have found be inspired 
or uninspired — this Christ holds up His life 
as the Model Life. He claims to be the Ideal 
Man. His unparalleled audacity — if I may 
use the expression — is such that he actually 
stands up before the entire world and chal- 
lenges criticism. 

His two fundamental laws arrest and com- 
mand our attention : — 

No man can escape his own record. 

Every man must face some kind of a 
judgment. 

Laws irrevocable, and absolutely true in 
business, politics, morals, and every-day life. 

With such a life, then, for an example, and 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 



71 



with such laws for a foundation, the Church 
passes into the arena of history, offers 
Christ's life as an ideal for all humanity, and 
Christ's teachings as a universal code of 
morals. Now comes the test, the infallible 
test of time — time, into whose crucible all 
impostures must go, and out of which none 
have ever yet come unharmed. 

Mark the procession of the centuries ! 
Nero is Emperor of Rome now, and the 
century closes with Trajan wearing the im- 
perial crown. The next century finds Marcus 
Aurelius on the banks of the Danube ; the 
next, and Diocletian is Emperor ; and the 
next is ushered in by Constantine the Great, 
and closing sees the Empire divided. An- 
other century, and Attila invades Italy, and 
Rome is plundered by the Vandals and is 
recaptured by Belisarius in the next. Then 
comes the century that sees Mohammed's 



7 2 



INGERSOLLISM: 



glory, flight, and death, and another that 
closes with Charlemagne preparing for his 
coronation as Emperor of the West. The 
next century brings to Alfred the Great the 
imperial robes of Britain, and the next finds 
the house of Capet on the throne of France. 
A thousand years have passed ! Harold is 
King of England now, the battle of Hastings 
is fought, and William the Conqueror has 
come. Another century, and Ireland is sub- 
dued, and King John and his barons rule 
England. Another passes, and the Ottoman 
Empire appears. Another opens with Bruce 
crowned King of Scotland ; Bannockburn is 
fought, and Bruce has died. The next cen- 
tury sees Henry the Fourth King of Eng- 
land, and in the next the battle of Agincourt 
is fought ; Joan of Arc dies at the stake ; 
Martin Luther is born ; America is discov- 
ered ; modern history is begun ; the light of 



FROM A SECCLAR FOJXT OF J' JEW. 



73 



universal intelligence is breaking: ; the cen- 
turies lose their distinctness, and we begin 
to measure time by eras of progress and 
epochs of thought, until at last there pass 
before us the wonders of the nineteenth 
century — and there, there in the very midst 
of its glory and culture, in the midst of its 
millions of purposes and plans, in the midst 
of its engines and telegraphs and systems 
and palaces and philosophies, we find there 
has come through all the blood and tears and 
tyrannies of centuries, " marching with slow 
and stately tread across the realms " and 
across the ages, the Man-God — the God- 
Man — the Christ of modern Christianity; 
and with a gentleness unutterable and a 
majesty unspeakable, is winning the heart 
and moulding the character of the man whom 
we left with naught for a guide but the 
consciousness of one Eternal and Infinite 



74 



INGERSOLLISM: 



Being — yea, winning his heart and moulding 
his character here in this Western world of 
ours, by teaching him the two simple lessons 
of the Fatherhood of God and the Universal 
Brotherhood of Man. 

Think of it ! — Eighteen hundred years of 
relentless criticism, and there lives not this 
day upon the face of the globe an honest and 
intelligent sceptic who dare lay his finger 
upon a single point in the character of the 
Ideal Man and deny that it is absolute moral 
perfection. 

A question now — and then we pass to 
another branch of our discussion. Is this a 
mere man — this Ideal One — and what is 
there in His religion and His alone that 
adapts itself to men of all nations, despite 
the laws of climate and of race ? Climatic 
influences, customs and circumstances, it is 
said, shape religions and beliefs — and this 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 75 

broad generalization of modern philosophy 
has shaken the faith of many an inquiring 
mind, as I frankly confess to you it for years 
shook mine. A man is a Mohammedan, we 
are told, simply because he is born in Tur- 
key; he is a worshipper of Buddha, or a fol- 
lower of Confucius, because he is born in 
India, China or Japan ; and he is a Christian, 
simply and only because he is born in Eng- 
land or North America. This broad gener- 
alization of modern philosophy to-day shakes 
the faith of many candid and inquiring men. 
Now concede to this law all that Buckle and 
Draper have claimed for it — for it is from 
Buckle and Draper that modern infidelity 
has derived its arguments upon this point — 
concede to it all these authors have claimed 
for it, and by it you may perhaps be able to 
explain why the south of Europe should be 
Roman Catholic, while the north became 



j6 INGERSOLLISM: 



Protestant, and of that which became Prot- 
estant, Switzerland and the west of Europe 
became Calvinistic, while most of Germany, 
Sweden, Denmark and Norway became Lu- 
theran. By some such natural law, it may 
perhaps not be difficult to tell why the Gene- 
van school of Calvinism became the model 
for France, Holland, Scotland, part of Eng- 
land, and consequently for North America. 
By an exposition of the laws which make the 
temperament a guide to the mental charac- 
teristics, you may perhaps be able to explain 
why men of sanguine temperament may be 
Methodists, or severe and thoughtful men be 
Presbyterians ; those of an analytic turn of 
mind go to the Baptist theology ; the syn- 
thetic to the Episcopalian ; and thus go on 
and point out the mental or other peculiari- 
ties of each great denomination. But tell me, 
I beg, by what natural law do you explain it ; 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. J J 

tell me why it is that all the creeds of Chris- 
tendom, and all the civilized nations of the 
earth, unite in accepting the Ideal Man of 
Christianity, despite the laws of climate and 
of race ? I will attempt to answer the ques- 
tion from the standpoint of a man of the 
world. 

When we ask why His can be the only uni- 
versal religion, I look to all other religions 
and I see written in each, one word that re- 
veals the cause. It is a word more hateful 
than that word superstition, on which modern 
infidels concentrate their wrath — more hate- 
ful than the word bigotry — more hateful than 
the word cruelty — more hateful than the 
word oppression — for it is the word that 
sums them all, superstition, bigotry, cruelty, 
and oppression, and that word is Caste. 

Go to China, to India, to Turkey, or to Per- 
sia, and in each nation religion becomes the 



78 INGERSOLLISM: 



synonym of Caste. There, man is taught 
that there is much in God for the worshipper 
to adore ; here, the worshipper is taught that 
there is something in man, in every man, 
worthy the attention of God himself. There, 
man is taught that there are inequalities 
among men ; here, men are taught that all 
are equal before the Infinite. 

In my judgment as a politician, looking at 
the matter purely from the standpoint of 
political philosophy, the commanding feature 
of Christ's philosophy is that no man, however 
rich or however poor, however wise or how- 
ever ignorant, is to be despised ; and if the 
wise and the rich hate the ignorant and the 
poor, or the ignorant and the poor hate the 
wise and the rich, the hater stands condemned. 

To my mind, the grand central thought of 
Christianity is that every living soul of every 
race, of every clime, of every creed, of every 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 



79 



condition, of every color — every living soul 
— is worth a kingdom ! 

I can read between the lines on every page 
of the four biographies of the Nazarene, that 
the great heart of the Infinite would willingly 
suffer an age of agony for the sake of the 
humblest man or woman in all the world. 

Who can measure the effect upon society 
of this doctrine ? Who can estimate its 
power for good ? Why, more of charity and 
benevolence, and more of social and intellect- 
ual progress, may be found in that one pecul- 
iar feature of Christianity than in all other 
systems and philosophies combined. And 
here I challenge Infidelity to name an era or 
a school in which this doctrine was taught as 
a duty prior to the advent of the Ideal Man. 
I grant you that the very poor, in different 
ages prior to the new era, had their physical 
necessities cared for ; but no system ever be- 



8o INGERSOLLISM: 



fore ran the whole gamut of social gradation, 
from the highest note down to the lowest, 
and pronounced them all divine. I say all; for 
midway between poverty and wealth surges 
the great ocean of humanity, over whose 
troubled waters still walks the Ideal Man, 
and as of old says, " Peace, be still." 

Now take the fact that the Author of 
Christianity put this unparalleled estimate 
upon human nature, and put it, too, upon a 
human nature capable of fastening his body 
like a malefactor's to a wooden cross, and 
you have the peculiar thought in the Chris- 
tian system which gives it a distinctive and 
universal genius. 

Now to our other question — Is the Author 
and Exponent of this wonderful system 
merely a man ? I need not tell you that such 
a question — a question that has filled whole 
libraries and engaged the life-long labors of 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 8 I 

thousands of earth's greatest scholars — can- 
not be answered, and the answer placed be- 
yond cavil, in a single lecture nor in a single 
volume. Go, therefore, in this passing hour 
and avail yourself of the conclusions of 
another, but nevertheless conclusions which 
your judgment shall respect when to-morrow 
you bring them to the test of reason and re- 
flection. As the lawyers say, let us submit 
the question to an expert. And why not ? 
Property and life itself hang every day in our 
courts upon such testimony. But where shall 
we find one so competent and yet so disinter- 
ested that the highest intellects in the infidel 
world will admit him to the witness-stand ? — 
where one who has gone into many countries, 
read with care the histories of all nations, in- 
vestigated all religions, and studied and un- 
derstood, as no other man, the secret springs 
of human action? — where one who brought 



INGERSOLLISM: 



to the investigation of social laws and cus- 
toms a genius which the whole world shall 
recognize, a genius free from bias in favor of 
any creed or sect, and who shall testify with 
a spirit absolutely disinterested ? Such a 
one we have, and he bears the greatest of 
all names in modern history : the name of 
Napoleon ! Let me remind you now that in 
Napoleon's lifetime Volney had lived, Hume 
had lived, Holbach and Rousseau had lived, 
Voltaire had lived, and Paine wrote his "Age 
of Reason " and had lived in Paris ten years 
before Napoleon became Emperor of the 
French. The philosophies of all these men 
passed before him in review. In brief, let me 
remind you that Napoleon lived in an infidel 
age, when literature breathed the spirit of 
infidelity, and when legislation, art, and cus- 
toms, all bore the impress of the master minds 
of infidelity. 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 83 

His wonderful career had closed, and at St. 
Helena no cause for dissimulation remained. 
An ambitious, cruel, heartless, wicked man, 
this Napoleon had been ; a tyrant, a despot, 
a scourge, the enemy of his race, if you will; 
but with it all, he possessed an intellect as 
penetrating and profound as ever human 
being was gifted with. Conclusions stamped 
with the approval of his great mind are 
themselves arguments. But listen to the 
testimony, and hear not only the conclusions 
but the arguments of that mind. Indulge 
me, then, for a single moment, while I merely 
repeat the words that fell from him. Turn- 
ing from a reverie, he said to his favorite 
general and companion : 

" I know men, Bertrand, and I tell you that 
Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds 
see a resemblance between Christ and the 
gods of other religions. That resemblance 



84 INGERSOLLISM: 



does not exist. * * * Paganism was never 
accepted as truth by the wise men of Greece, 
by Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Anaxagoras, 
nor Pericles; but upon the other side, the 
loftiest intellects have had a living faith in 
the doctrines of the Gospel, — not only Bos- 
suet and Fenelon, who were preachers, but 
Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, 
Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne and 
Louis XIV. Paganism is the work of 
man. What do their gods know more than 
other mortals — these priests of India or of 
Memphis — this Confucius, this Mohammed ? 
Absolutely nothing. * * * Are these gods 
and these religions to be compared with 
Christianity? As for me, I say — No! I 
summon the entire Olympus of the gods to 
my tribunal. I — Napoleon — judge the gods. 
The gods of China and of India, of Athens 
and of Rome, have nothing which can over- 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 85 

awe me. * * * I see in Lycurgus, Numa, 
and Mohammed, only legislators who sought 
the best solution of the social problem. I 
see nothing which reveals divinity. I recog- 
nize the gods and these great men as beings 
like myself. They performed a lofty part in 
their times, as I have done. There are many 
resemblances between them and myself, foi- 
bles and errors, allying them to me and to 
humanity. It is not so with Christ. Every- 
thing in Him astonishes me. His spirit over- 
awes me and His will confounds me. He is a 
being by himself. His birth and the history 
of His life, the profundity of His doctrine, 
which grapples with the mightiest difficulties, 
and is of those difficulties the most admira- 
ble solution, His Gospel, His apparition, His 
empire, everything is to me a prodigy, an 
insoluble mystery, a mystery which is there 
before my eyes, a mystery which I neither 



86 INGERSOLLISM: 



can deny nor explain. * * * One can abso- 
lutely find nowhere but in Him alone the 
imitation or the example of His life. The 
nearer I approach, the more carefully I ex- 
amine, everything is above me, everything 
remains grand, of a grandeur which over- 
powers. * * * I search in vain in history 
to find a parallel to Jesus Christ, or anything 
which can approach the Gospel. Neither his- 
tory nor humanity nor the ages can offer me 
anything with which I am able to compare 
it or explain it. The more I consider that 
Gospel the more I am assured that there is 
nothing there which is not beyond the march 
of events and above the human mind. Who 
but God could produce that style of perfec- 
tion, equally exclusive and original ? * * * 
In every other existence but that of Christ, 
how many imperfections ! Where is the 
character which has not yielded, vanquished 



FFOM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. S 1 / 

by obstacles ? Where is the individual who 
lias never been governed by circumstances 
or places, who has never succumbed to the 
influence of the times, who has never com- 
pounded with any customs or passions ? 
From the first day to the last, He is the 
same, always the same, majestic and simple, 
infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. * * * 
Christ speaks, and at once generations be- 
come His by stricter, closer ties than those 
of blood. I have so inspired multitudes that 
they would die for me. But after all, my 
presence was necessary. * * Such is 

Christianity, the only religion which destroys 
sectional prejudice, the only one which is 
purely spiritual, in fine the only one which 
assigns to all, without distinction, for a true 
country, the bosom of the Creator, God. 
Christ proved that He was the Son of the 
Eternal by His disregard of Time. All His 



88 INGERSOLLISM: 



doctrines signify one and the same thing, 
Eternity. * * * Behold the destiny near 
at hand of him who has been called the great 
Napoleon ! What an abyss between my mis- 
ery and the eternal reign of Christ, which is 
proclaimed, loved, adored, and which is ex- 
tending over all the earth ! Is this to die ? 
Is it not rather to live? The death of Christ! 
It is the death of a God. * * * Bertrand, 
if you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is 
God, very well — then I did wrong to make 
you a general." 

Scoffer and sceptic may rise now and de- 
nounce the ambition and countless crimes of 
this witness. But his discernment, his pene- 
tration, his judgment, his knowledge of men 
and motives, his genius, they dare not deny. 
There, then, upon that platform and upon 
that, a short time ago in Washington City, 
still later in Chicago, and to-morrow else- 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW 89 

where, is Ino-ersoll sneering at the religion 
of Christ. Yonder at St. Helena, solemnly 
confessing Christ to be above humanity, 
calmly sits the prodigy of earth, autocrat of 
autocrats, genius incarnate, the intellectual 
wonder of the world; and let Ingersoll and 
his followers profit by the comparison. 

Permit me here a brief digression. Many 
of you are familiar with the arguments of 
Strauss and Renan and others of the school 
those writers represent. Admitting that 
Jesus Christ existed, they allege, however, 
that there is so much of myth and legend 
and tradition surrounding His life and inter- 
mingled with His teachings, that Christianity 
is at best a mythical, legendary, and tradi- 
tional affair. Admitting further that Christ 
was a good man, yet they tell us He was 
invested by His enthusiastic followers with 
attributes He did not possess. We are fur- 



9 o 



INGERSOLLISM , 



ther told that there is much in Christianity 
that is not new; that the Immaculate Con- 
ception is an idea hundreds of years older 
than the Christian religion ; that Krishna, 
several centuries before Christ, was born of 
a' virgin; that the doctrine of the Trinity is 
older than Christianity ; and that scattered 
here and there through the older religions 
of the world are other fragments of Christian 
doctrines and beliefs. Much of all this is 
true, and upon these truths Rationalism rears 
an argument to the effect that Christianity 
is simply an aggregation — a crystallization 
around Christ — of the fragments scattered 
through older religions; that it is largely 
mythical and legendary in its origin, and 
will not bear the analysis of advanced and 
critical scholarship. 

At one time this reasoning set me adrift 
for awhile, and profounder men than I have 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 



91 



had the same experience. I allude to this 
phase of infidelity, not to enter upon a refuta- 
tion of it, but to give you an example of the 
logic it employs, and by that example to illus- 
trate the value of such reasoning. 

If there be any truth in the old Pythago- 
rean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, 
let us imagine that the spirit of Ernst Renan 
shall pass into some historian who three or 
five hundred years hence will sit down to 
write the history of our country and especially 
of these later times. He begins by saying 
we are now a nation of two hundred millions 
of people ; about the middle of the nineteenth 
century we were only forty millions ; now we 
have a grand federation of one hundred states, 
then we had only thirty-eight ; then the re- 
public was just emerging from its infancy, 
now it surpasses in grandeur the fondest 
dreams of its earlier statesmen. What caused 



9 2 INGER SOLLISM : 



this wondrous growth, this marvellous devel- 
opment ? Some of our people once believed 
— and, indeed, the story is current still — that 
in those days an institution known as human 
slavery existed in America, an institution 
under which human beings were owned and 
bartered as cattle, and that under its blight- 
ing influences the growth of our nation was 
retarded and social progress held in check. 
Further the story runs, that between the years 
i860 and 1870 a man named Abraham Lin- 
coln was raised up by the people of the North 
and made their leader ; that by his side, as 
aid and counsellor, was a man named Hanni- 
bal Hamlin ; that these men called around 
them the people of twenty-eight states, and 
went forth and made war upon the people of 
the other states, won great victories, and 
wiped from the face of the land the stain of 
slavery. Thereupon the upward and onward 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE IV 93 

progress of our nation immediately became 
wonderful in rapidity, until at last we have 
grown beyond all that ever patriot hoped for. 
This is the story ; but we are not satisfied 
with it. It will not bear analysis. Later 
investigation convinces us that it is simply an 
aggregation of fragmentary truths scattered 
through history. That such a person as Lin- 
coln existed may be true, but we feel war- 
ranted in saying that his enthusiastic admirers 
have invested him with qualities he did not 
possess. Let us look at this tradition in the 
light of critical scholarship. Abraham Lin- 
coln! Why, the very first syllables of his name 
— Abra — furnish a clue to the mythical or 
legendary character of the whole story. The 
word Abratn in the original means mighty 
father, but was frequently used to signify 
benefactor. A ray of light falls on the legen- 
dary nature of the story; Abram — benefactor. 



94 



INGERSOLLISM . 



Let us go a step further. We have recently 
discovered that in those times, among all 
English-speaking people, the word Ham stood 
synonymous with the word slave, and that 
slaves were frequently called the sons of 
Ham. We at once perceive that the mythi- 
cal or symbolic significance of the name Abra- 
ham is greatly enhanced by the remarkable 
discovery that Abraham means Abra, bene- 
factor ; Ham — slave : benefactor of the slave. 
Now this significant fact must cast a doubt 
upon the story in the mind of every critical 
scholar. But still further. Hannibal Ham- 
lin ! We positively deny the existence of 
any such person. We find no authentic trace 
of him before that war, and his career ended 
when that war closed. He drops out of the 
story as suddenly as he enters it. A moment's 
analysis will convince the most sceptical. His 
name furnishes conclusive proof. The first 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 95 

syllable of his name, Hani, is the last syllable 
of Abraham, and the second syllable of his 
name, lin, is the first syllable of Lincoln ; so 
we discover that the name Hamlin is taken 
bodily out of the middle of the name Abraham 
Lincoln, and the people believe his given 
name was Hannibal because those times were 
war times, and the story is a war legend, and 
Hannibal had been known for many centuries 
as a great warrior ! Can any critical scholar 
now doubt the mythical origin of the story ? 
But still further : It is said that those two 
men led the people of twenty-eight states. 
Count the letters in the name, Abraham 
Lincoln ; there are fourteen. Count the 
letters in the name, Hannibal Hamlin ; there 
are fourteen. Combine the two and there 
are twenty-eight ! Who believes that this 
is mere accident, and that the twenty-eight 
letters are not designed to stand for the 



96 INGERSOLLISM . 



twenty-eight states that waged the war, and 
who can fail to see in this, traces of that 
ancient superstition which attributed magical 
power to the relation which numbers bore to 
names and events ? 

Thus dissecting this story, we find it doubt- 
ful, mythical, traditional, legendary, and, as 
free-thinkers, as rational independent investi- 
gators, we reject it, doubt if slavery ever 
existed, believe the war a myth, and deny 
that Lincoln and Hamlin ever lived ! 

This ludicrous analysis is, I submit, as 
good an argument as Renan's against Chris- 
tianity ; and our remote descendants shall, 
if they be bold free-thinkers, capable of inde- 
pendent thought, and brave enough to spurn 
the teachings of priest and preacher, consign 
to the limbo of exploded superstitions the 
story of the war for freedom ; and one of the 
grand names of the age — the name of 



FROM .4 SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. gj 

Lincoln, a name we had believed immortal — 
shall be quietly dismissed with a scholarly 
and intellectual sneer. 

I now assert that we have found enough 
of argument to justify us in holding true 
two fundamental beliefs : 

First — God exists. 
« Second — Christ is a God-given ideal. 

From these two facts, a third must logi- 
cally issue. If Christ be God-given, so much 
of that book we found and called the Bible 
as faithfully records his works and truthfully 
reports his sayings must be true. There can 
be no escape from this conclusion. I reverse 
the ordinary process of reasoning, and sum 
the argument up in what to my mind is now 
an unanswerable sentence, and say — what- 
ever is true of a God-given Christ must be 
God-eiven truth. That much of the Bible is 



9 8 INGER SOLLISM : 



enough. Now let theologians say how much 
that excludes, or let them say that it includes 
it all — it matters not to me; I say that so 
much of that book as bears upon the Ideal 
Man, and so much of that book as the Ideal 
Man has set the seal of his approval on, we 
may safely accept as a moral teacher. 

The great want in the heart and brain of 
many thinking men, when they come to the 
Bible, is antecedent ground for belief in its 
truthfulness. I argue, therefore, not from 
the Bible to Christ, but from Christ to the 
Bible. I do not believe in Christ because of 
the Bible, but I believe in the Bible because 
of Christ. 

Remembering that his maxims and teach- 
ings, when faithfully applied, invariably solve 
every moral problem of life, and contem- 
plating the acknowledged fact that those 
same teachings, when viewed simply as an 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 



99 



ethical and philosophical system, exhibit wis- 
dom far beyond any known among men, I am 
compelled to say, He indeed is the infallible 
Teacher. 

The infallibility of Christ is a broader and 
stronger argument for the Book than all the 
theories of inspiration that men Jiave yet 
devised. The seal of His approval is, even 
on rationalistic ground, a sufficient warrant 
for our acceptance of that Book. Such sur- 
passing wisdom as His cannot be mistaken — 
such surpassing purity and love cannot de- 
ceive us. The impress of His royal signet 
has placed the writings of Moses and all the 
prophets where they cannot fall until He, the 
Christ, Himself has fallen. 

So we come at last to God, Christ, and the 
Bible, and as rational men have reason for 
the faith that is in us. 



I OO INGERSOLLISM . 



Now what interest have we who come from 
counting-room and store-room, from legisla- 
tive halls and boards of trade, and from the 
various industrial walks of life, what interest 
have we in the aggregate of religious teach- 
ings and influences to which I have already 
referred as embodied in and derived from the 
Bible ? I do not mean an interest so far as 
they bear upon what is called " Salvation," 
but I have come to the practical view, and I 
mean an interest so far as our immediate 
objects are concerned. 

What are those objects ? I think they 
may be comprehended in three things : 

I. As citizens, a stable and pure govern- 
ment. 

II. As business men, the acquisition of 
property. 

III. As social beings, happy homes. 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. IOI 

We can best determine the bearing of the 
church upon these three great objects of life 
by considering the legitimate results of Inger- 
sollism. Government, Property, and Home 
shall now constitute our trinity, the business 
man's trinity, neither element self-existent, all 
co-dependent ; and when properly combined 
and each properly adjusted in all its relations 
to the other, we may call the result Civiliza- 
tion. In this trinity may be found all the 
elements of business, society, and politics. 

Let us now take the Ingersoll creed, 
" Happiness in this life," for our creed too. 
Unquestionably the most happiness is de- 
rived from the highest civilization, and the 
highest civilization is obtained only when 
Government, Property, and Home are each 
and all conserved. In the name, then, of this 
trinity I have come to arraign and denounce 
Ingersoll's teachings as a crime against gov- 



I O 2 INGERSOLLISM . 



ernment and law ; as a crime against com- 
merce and trade ; as a crime against 
civilization ; and, in one word, as a crime 
against humanity. 

Now take human nature as it is — and in 
this way alone may we deal with social 
problems — take human nature as it is, and 
can you conceive of free government and 
civil law existing among, say fifty millions 
of people, who have none of the restraints of 
religious teaching and influence about them ? 
Remember, it is not alone to compel your 
profound philosopher to be just, that civil 
government, and civil law with all its com- 
plex variations, are instituted. Socrates, 
Aristotle, and Solon may need neither civil 
government nor civil law ; but the ever per- 
plexing question which haunts your wise 
statesman and your honest politician is, What 
of the millions? 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW 



IO3 



The scholar in his easy chair may specu- 
late and reason away all religion, and yet go 
out into the world and perhaps for a time be 
an honest and just man. The intuitive 
decision of bright and thorough-edged intel- 
lect may part error from crime, and the silver 
flow of a subtle-paced counsel may make safe 
citizens of Plato, Voltaire, and Ingersoll. 
But what of the hewer of wood, whose life 
is a strucro-le for bread, raiment, and shelter, 
for himself, his wife, and his little ones ? We 
often speak of the hewer of wood but when 
we think of him in relation to time and 
opportunity for acquiring any other than the 
simple creed of Bible-taught morality, how 
many of us become hewers of wood — me- 
chanics, farmers, merchants, tradesmen, pro- 
fessional men, and all the toilers of the 
thousand other laborious callings known 
among men ? What shall I say of the mill- 



104 INGERSOLLISM . 



ions — the people — that surging, boundless 
ocean of humanity we call the masses? In- 
deed, my sceptical friend, the impenetrable 
wall of an iron necessity shuts off from the 
millions much of the Infidel's creed — reason, 
observation, and experience. Ninety out of 
every hundred men, nay, more, pass almost 
every waking hour in a struggle for bread. 
"Thou shalt " and "Thou shalt not" may be 
laws to which the deductive method of Aris- 
totle or the inductive method of Bacon may 
bring your philosopher for rules of action, 
but what knowledge of those rules can be 
acquired through philosophic reasoning by 
those of us who are bound to the ever- 
revolving wheel of unceasing toil ? 

Will your philosophers come and teach us ? 
A doubtful proposition — but grant it. Ah, 
in so doing you simply substitute one order 
of priests for another — a philosophic in lieu 



FROM A SECULAR PC/XT OF VIEW 



I05 



of a theologic priesthood ; and your hated 
order of priest and preacher will still remain ! 
And what if some man who in the opinion of 
the masses is wiser than your philosopher 
shall some day come and say the new priest- 
hood are hypocrites and sponges all ? Who 
shall say him nay? Where is your arbiter? 
Let us destroy the Bible and annihilate among 
men all consciousness of God, and I will grant 
you we may do well enough, we and our chil- 
dren, and perhaps our children's children. 
The moral impetus given by Christianity to 
civilization might, and doubtless would, be 
projected on into the next fifty or seventy-five 
years. But what then? Grant that our philos- 
ophers will hold their self-taught code of 
morals ; but remember that the millions, your 
children and your children's children, will 
have no God — no Bible — no Religion. 

And right here let us have no self-decep- 



1 06 INGERSOLLISM: 



tion. The millions were hewers of wood yes- 
terday, as many millions are hewers of wood 
to-day, and as many millions more will be 
hewers of wood to-morrow. Genius and learn- 
ing and talents are not inheritable, and wealth 
rarely reaches its second generation. While 
storm and flood and pestilence shall come 
and go, while improvidence and disease and 
calamity in all its myriad forms beset the 
paths of the human race, the millions will 
still be hewers of wood. The children prat- 
tling now around the knee of philosopher and 
millionaire will go down into the depths to 
struggle up again or die as toilers. It is one 
of the saddest facts in human history. Build 
as you will, accumulate as you may, struggle 
as only strong and true men can struggle for 
those they hold dear, yet to this complexion 
it must come at last ; there are but one or 
two coffins, one or two little grass-covered 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. IO/ 

mounds of earth, between luxury and toil. 
Call it fate, call it God's curse in Eden, call 
it what you will : it is an inexorable fact. 

And let us not deceive ourselves in another 
view. Let not the increase of national wealth, 
the growth of colleges and schools, and the 
progress of scientific thought, Matter us with 
the fancy that while all these change labor in 
kind they change it also in degree. Grant 
that eierht-hour laws, steam engines, and tele- 
graphs, may shorten a day's labor ; yet all the 
more intense does that labor become, and all 
the more of rest must follow. 

Then once more I ask you, what of the 
millions — what of the people — what of your 
children's children, with no consciousness of 
God, and robbed by infidelity of the simple 
but sublime creed of Bible-taught morality ? 

Do you ask me now for an application of 
all this to the question of civil government ? 



1 08 INGERSOLLISM: 



Then I ask you, does not all history teach 
you that " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not " 
are laws written in the hearts of the people 
long before they are ever written on the 
pages of our statute books ? Do you not 
know that if those laws were not in the hearts 
of the people — not alone in the hearts of 
your philosophers, but in the hearts of the 
people — they would not be on the pages of 
our statutes, and when they are erased from 
the hearts of the people they will be erased 
from the statutes ? Remember that all legis- 
lation, be the government free or despotic, is 
in its last results the will of the people. Here 
an election announces that will ; yonder it 
requires a revolution ; but in the end, in all 
governments, the voice of the law is the voice 
of the people. Oh, the power, the terrible 
power, of the people ! Before the people, 
thrones and empires are baubles, and govern- 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. 109 

ments and armies are pigmies and playthings. 
Arouse the people, and the warnings of phi- 
losophers are heeded as little as the notes of 
the strange birds that fly before the tempest 
are heeded by the storm king ! I appeal to 
you as the champion of no sect, the repre- 
sentative of no denomination, the exponent 
of no creed — but as a business man, as a 
citizen, and I believe as a patriot ; and in the 
name of all history I implore you to remem- 
ber that the only power that can restrain and 
safely guide ourselves and the millions is the 
unseen but mighty power of " Thus saith 
the Lord God Almighty." 

While universal infidelity must work ruin 
to all civil government, yet it is peculiarly 
true of a republic, where the relations of the 
people to the government are so direct and 
immediate. Here universal infidelity means 
in its first results an armed centralization. 



I I O INGERSOLLISM. 



Why ? Because a people without a God must 
have a bayonet. Social order with Atheism 
is a paradox, unless grounded on Gatling guns 
and repeating rifles. Remove the restraints 
of religion, and you must immediately 
strengthen the arm of the civil power for 
your own protection. The church is to-day 
the great conservator of the peace. There is 
more power for the public safety in the whis- 
pered utterances of a God-fearing priest or 
preacher than in all your batteries and iron- 
clads. 

I repeat, universal infidelity means central- 
ization, centralization means despotism, des- 
potism means ultimate revolution ; and once 
let revolution come, and let there be in the 
minds of fifty millions of people no God, and 
— well, the French people saw such a sight 
once, and though it is near a hundred years 
ago, civilization shudders as it recalls the 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. \ \ \ 

time when Ingersollism ruled France. Ioger- 
soll may be, in truth is — and as an Illinoisan 
I have said it East and West with pride — a . 
patriot ; but Ingersollism is high treason to 
all civil government, and high treason to all 
civil law. 

Consider now the second element in our 
trinity — Property. 

The very highest point that Infidelity can 
reach here is the time-worn maxim, " Honesty 
is the best policy." That maxim, it is true, 
is the result of observation and experience, 
and may indeed be confirmed by a process 
of philosophic reasoning. But what concep- 
tion of honesty shall the man have, young or 
old, whose observation and experience are 
not wide enough to teach him that honesty 
is the best policy ? I ask you as business 
men, is it that maxim, or is it the training 
and influence, remote or direct, of Bible- 



I I 2 INGERSOLLISM: 



taught fathers and mothers, that give you 
to-day a trustworthy class of young employes, 
clerks, salesmen, messengers and all ? Which 
commands your confidence to-day, a young 
man's character founded on philosophy based 
upon his reason, observation, and experience, 
or a young man's character based upon a con- 
science ? Infidelity, then, is a crime against 
business and against trade. 

Ingersoll annihilates conscience. If Her- 
bert Spencer, with all his ethical data, fails to 
find a sure foundation for conscience, what 
foundation is left among the sweeping nega- 
tions of Ingersollism ? Commerce without 
conscience is a vampire. Gambling is a fine 
art with conscience left out. Conscience 
makes bank stock marketable. Confidence 
and conscience are synonyms in the world of 
trade. Infidel philosophy may originate a 
few wise maxims, but it can never gfive 



FROM A SEC I' LA J! POIXT OF VIEW. 



113 



energy, form, and vitality to that soul of 
business — an honest conscience. 

And once more, you who come from count- 
ing-room and store-room, remember just here 
the millions upon whose broad shoulders rest 
your countless enterprises, and whose strong 
arms produce and exchange all your objects 
of trade. Take away from them the thought 
that you and they stand equal in the sight 
of God, a thought given to them alone by 
Christianity ; take away from yourselves the 
thought that they are your equals in the 
sight of God ; take away from them the feel- 
ing of brotherhood, a feeling given to them 
alone by the Ideal One ; leave to the toiling 
millions naught but a toiler's life and a toil- 
er's grave, with no reckoning beyond, where 
the uneven things of this most uneven 
world may at last be set even ; — go forth 
with Ingersoll and write upon the gates of 



114 INGERSOLLISM: 



your cities, " There is no God," and proclaim 
from the walls that " Death is an eternal 
sleep ;" — in a word, kill, burn out, annihilate 
conscience, all the way down to the nether- 
most stratum of humanity, and woe- — woe 
betide your comprehensive schemes of enter- 
prise, and woe betide your every accumula- 
tion of wealth ! Where is the power in this 
land of ours that shall then stay that beetle- 
browed hag, infidelity's twin sister in every 
age and in every land, infidelity's twin sister 
to-day in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and 
New York, where— it may not be all a dream 
— under her foul incantations there is gath- 
ering a storm that may some day rend the 
earth beneath your feet like an earthquake — 
infidelity's twin sister upon every page of 
human history— the commune ? Is there no 
significance for American business men in 
the fact that but a little while asro a few 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. \ 15 

thousand honest but misguided laborers, 
incited in some of our principal cities by 
French, German, and American infidel com- 
munists, made every business man in the 
land cry out for a stronger government ? I 
do not say that every infidel is a commu- 
nist; but I do say, and say it deliberately, 
that from the British line to the waters 
of the gulf, from ocean to ocean, in every 
city of our land, the avowed communistic 
leaders as a class are Godless infidels. By 
the light of Pittsburgh's conflagration I can 
see Ingersoll's legend, " Religion is supersti- 
tion," floating in the niorht over the heads of 
a frenzied mob. 

And now consider the third element in our 
trinity — Home. 

Government and law, and commerce and 
trade, are seemingly distinct from the idea" 



1 6 INGERSOLLISM: 



of Home ; and yet all lines leading from all 
that we have said centre in Home. Recol- 
lect that the Ingersoll creed, " Happiness in 
this life," is our creed too. Yes, we dig 
canals, hew down forests, overset our prai- 
ries, build cities, operate railroads, network 
with telegraph wire the continent, and with 
an Atlantic cable turn the ocean depths into 
a whispering gallery for the nations — all that 
we may be happy. But who ? What we? 
Infidelity says the strong and self-reliant. 
It must of necessity say the strong and self- 
reliant. Infidelity, in proclaiming happiness, 
has no word of comfort for a weak old man 
or an aged woman. 

Infidelity would stagger like a drunkard 
if chosen for a pall-bearer. It would stam- 
mer like a witless inmate of an asylum if 
asked to frame an epitaph for a baby's grave. 

For neither childhood nor motherhood, for 



FROM A SECT EAR POEYT OF VIEW. 



117 



neither the marriage altar nor the cradle, for 
neither old age nor the death bed, has Infi- 
delity one word in its vaunted creed of " Hap- 
piness." Hence I say Infidelity can claim to 
furnish " Happiness" only to the strong and 
self-reliant — and yet that claim is as false as 
a new-coined lie ! 

Why, not one man in a thousand has 
wrought for his own happiness alone. His 
household — be it composed of wife and child 
or of mother or sister, in some form or other, 
be the roof-tree his own or a borrowed tree — 
the household is the pivot around which turns 
the whole existence of civilized man. Upon 
the household altar he lays his accumula- 
tions, and the happiness of the household is 
the direct object of civilized man. Through 
its happiness he seeks his. A nation of 
happy homes is the brightest dream of states- 
manship. 



I I 8 INGERSOLLISM . 



Am I indulging in sentiment, or am I not 
stating a plain every-day fact, when I tell you 
that your happiness depends in a full degree 
upon the happiness of mother, wife, sister, 
child, household ? Let us dwell a moment on 
those words, Home and Household. They rep- 
resent and encircle nearly all there is of life to 
much more than half the civilized world. 
Look behind the veil which that word Home 
lets fall every morning between our business 
world and the household, and we see cluster- 
ing about the hearthstones of rich and poor, 
many faithful wives and mothers and cradles ; 
many millions of ungrown men and women, 
unused as yet to the world and its devious 
ways ; millions worn by labor and disease ; and 
millions more chilled by the snow-drifts of age, 
waiting for the end of life. Of such are our 
households, and for these households civilized 
man goes forth at morn and returns at night. 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW. \ I 9 

Now, bear in mind the question that infi- 
delity presents is not, Shall we give to these 
households of ours the hopes, promises, and 
influences of religion? but the question infi- 
delity presents here, in the afternoon of the 
nineteenth century, is, Shall we take away 
from our homes, from our ungrown millions, 
from our aged and helpless ones, the promises 
and influences of religion? Ingersoll says — 
Aye, aye ; let fall upon every household in 
the land, upon every child lisping its first 
prayer, upon every marriage altar, upon every 
death bed, and upon all the hallowed associa- 
tions of Home, let fall the black pall of Athe- 
ism ! — and I say, he surely does not compre- 
hend the effect of his teachings upon human 
happiness, or his cruelty is unutterable and 
his malevolence unspeakable. This one phase 
of Ingersollism is enough to array against it 
all the forces of civilized society. When I 



2 O INGERSOLLISM : 



think of the bearings his teachings have upon 
our hearthstone life, and then reflect that it is 
a man with cultured brain and generous and 
sympathetic heart who in the name of human 
happiness proclaims these teachings, I cannot 
but conclude that either he plays a part, trips 
in his speech, or is upon this subject stark 
mad. 

Take one of a thousand things we think of 
when we imagine that his teachings are, in 
order to make us happier, installed at our 
homes in lieu of religion's hopes and prom- 
ises. Take the hour — and to every house- 
hold such hours must come — when the 
shadow of death lies upon the hearthstone. 
In that hour, go home, business man, seat 
yourself beside the coffin that holds your treas- 
ure — perchance a treasure that a day or two 
before hung lovingly about your knees and 
sung childish songs, or perchance a treasure 



FROM A SECi'LAR POIXT OF VIEW. 121 



that through most of a lifetime had been not 
only bone and flesh of your bone and flesh, 
but heart of your very heart — seat yourself 
beside the coffin that holds that treasure, read 
Ingersoll's lectures there, and be comforted ! 
If you think Ingersollism means happiness 
for your household, go and gather that house- 
hold about a new-made grave that holds the 
family jewel, and invoke the aid of Ingersoll- 
ism then ! Why, that tenderness of feeling 
upon which the household is based, which 
makes the household a possibility, and with- 
out which the household could not exist as a 
factor in society, must be eradicated from the 
human heart, or Ingersollism forever remain 
the most monstrous of parodies, the grimmest 
of sarcasms, when named as a rule of happi- 
ness in the household. 

These considerations — waiving a thousand 
others — make it unnecessary for us to fur- 



INGERSOLLISM . 



ther pursue the relations of Ingersollism to 
the household. 

And now, then, as rational men we have 
glanced at the foundation thought upon which 
all religion rests, the existence of God ; as 
moral men we have seen the God-given 
ideal and God-given book ; as citizens we 
have seen that religion is one of the surest 
props of civil government and civil law ; as 
business men we have seen that we cannot 
dispense with its influence ; and as social be- 
ings we have found it a household blessing. 
The question, therefore, with which I began 
— Ought we, upon the score of political econ- 
omy, to keep up the church? — is answered 
now by another and a greater question: How 
can we, as citizens and as business men, afford 
to dispense with the power and the influence 
of the church ? To this, every citizen and 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 123 

business man must answer : We cannot afford 
to lose the church. 

I have said to you that we so often find 
vice wrapped in the garb of religion that we 
are coming to lend willing ears to attacks 
upon Christianity. This leads me to remark 
two things of Ingersoll, both of which con- 
spire, in my judgment, to make his advent 
into this field a public blessing. First, he 
forces the issue between Infidelity and Reli- 
gion. There is something vague and intangi- 
ble in the underground movements of our 
dilettante moralists and sceptical scientists. 
But here is a foeman who comes squarely up 
to the work in his bold assaults upon Reli- 
gion. As a man of the world, he assails the 
cherished beliefs of millions ; and men of the 
world will come to the combat he invites. 
The result may be looked for without fear or 



I 2 4 INGERSOLLISM : 

trembling. The truth will triumph, and in 
the end be mightier in withstanding a new 
assault, mightier in winning a new victory, 
and mightier in staining new allies. 

The second and greater good he will in- 
directly accomplish will be in preparing the 
way for arraying against hypocrisy in the 
church all the better elements of society. 
It cannot be denied that the performances of 
so many professed Christians fall so far below 
their pretensions to superior morality that 
they thereby furnish to infidelity its most 
effective though most illogical weapons. A 
kiss and a betrayal is an old story in the 
history of Christianity. It is none the less 
true to-day than it was eighteen hundred 
years ago. Hypocrisy in the church is the 
Judas Iscariotism of the age. We have seen 
how intimately all our interests are inter- 
woven with the maintenance of true religion. 



FROM A SECULAR POIXT OF VIEW 



125 



It follows that our interests lie in the encour- 
agement of the boldest and most effective 
denunciation of that hypocrisy. Let that 
hypocrisy be lashed through the world with a 
whip of scorpions ; let it be scourged with 
the contempt of every honest man ; let it be 
pointed at with the finger of scorn in every 
assemblage of men. I doubt not that crusade 
is coming. What will be the result ? Its 
logical end must be the checking of infidelity. 
While it is one thing to denounce hypocrisy 
in the interest of infidelity, and another to 
denounce it in the interest of Christianity, 
yet in the end the result must be the same — 
the discomfiture of infidelity. 

I am no dreamer here. I look ahead, but 
not with my eye fixed upon some Utopian 
condition of society in which hypocrisy and 
the church will be completely and forever 
divorced ; but I do look for a time when the 



2 6 INGERSOLLISM : 



influences of Christianity which now pervade 
the civilized world and make honest and just 
men out of many who do not kneel at the 
altar of the church, shall, in the interest of 
that church, be arrayed against the Judas 
Iscariots of the nineteenth century. Such a 
crusade, I repeat, will prove a lasting good, 
and such a crusade, I repeat, will prove the 
defeat of infidelity. To my mind, hypocrisy 
in the church means infidelity in the church. 
I do not say that infidels outside the church 
are hypocrites, but I do say that your delib- 
erate hypocrite inside the church is an infidel. 
I paraphrase the text, and say it is as true 
to-day as when first it was uttered, that the 
mtm who says he loves his church, and yet 
hates or cheats his brother, is a liar. Hold 
fast to the thought, then, when the apostles 
of infidelity come into your midst and de- 
nounce the bad men inside the church — hold 



FROM A SECULAR FOFYT OF VIEW. 127 



fast to the thought that hypocrisy in the 
church means infidelity in the church, and 
then let all the people say God-speed Inger- 
soll in scourging his own disciples ! 

Every precept of reason drives us irresisti- 
bly to the conclusion that the man who 
deliberately uses Christianity for no other 
purpose than as a cloak for evil deeds is 
necessarily an unbeliever in disguise. Let 
the war go on, then, until public sentiment 
shall brand as worse than a thief the infidel 
who steals the livery of Christianity, and 
Ingersoll's secret worshippers be dragged by 
the force of public opinion from the sacred 
altars they disgrace. It is idle to attempt to 
palliate the charge of hypocrisy, and it is just 
as idle to fear that the charge will in the end 
cripple the church. Our men of affairs will 
discern the false from the true, and their own 
interests will prevent their spurning the 



I 2 8 INGERSOLLISM ; 



genuine because of the counterfeit. Infidel- 
ity cannot prevail. It destroys the best 
standard of truth and right in the moral 
world. 

Have you ever thought of it — a good man 
is to-day, in your midst, a good man only as 
he approaches the standard of Bible-taught 
morality ! Grant that an infidel may be a 
good man too — and many of them are exem- 
plary citizens — yet it can come about, it 
does come about, only by his approaching in 
action a standard which he rcptt-diatcs in 
words. 

Ingersoll personally and Ingersoll theo- 
retically are two beings as wide apart as 
civilization and barbarism. The world may 
well believe the former to be a good citizen, 
but it knows the latter to be a bad citizen. 
One of the most notorious outlaws known in 
the criminal annals of the West, Frank 



FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 129 



Rande, stood not long since at the bars of 
his cell in St. Louis, the very impersonation 
of every crime in the calendar, and, with the 
air of a braggart, said to preachers, priests, 
and policemen, to throngs of men and women, 
"I am a Bob Ingersoll man"; and every man 
and woman in the land believed him. Had 
this or any other criminal declared himself a 
religious man, every infidel in the land would 
have declared the man a hypocrite and his 
assertion false. It is no answer to tell us 
that perhaps in the cell adjoining his lay a 
man who for five-and-twenty years was prom- 
inent in the church, and was at last detected 
in a series of gigantic thefts and forgeries ; 
for let him but step to his prison door and 
say, " I am a Christian man," and all the 
civilized world cries out, " That man is a 
liar!" 

Remember always that that moral sense 



1 30 INGERSOLLISM. 



which enables you to discriminate between a 
good man who calls himself a Christian and a 
bad man who calls himself a Christian is a 
moral sense fostered and enlightened by 
Christianity itself, and so far as you possess 
that moral sense you possess an inestimable 
blessing. It is the spirit of patriotism which 
enables you to say who was the patriot, the 
immortal Washington or Benedict Arnold. 
As citizens loving the country bequeathed to 
us by the men and spirit of '76, as business 
men striving for success by honorable en- 
deavor, as men who love home and house- 
hold, no matter whether we be in the church 
or out, we cannot afford to let the infidelity 
of Ingersoll supplant Christianity. 



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